Description: These fast warships help safeguard
larger ships in a fleet or battle group.

Features: Destroyers and guided missile destroyers operate in support
of carrier battle groups, surface action groups, amphibious groups and
replenishment groups. Destroyers primarily perform anti-submarine warfare duty
while guided missile destroyers are multi-mission (ASW, anti-air and
anti-surface warfare) surface combatants. The addition of the Mk-41 Vertical
Launch System or Tomahawk
Armored Box Launchers (ABLs) to many Spruance-class destroyers has
greatly expanded the role of the destroyer in strike warfare.

Background: Technological advances have improved the capability of
modern destroyers culminating in the Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) class. Named
for the Navy's most famous destroyer squadron combat commander and three-time
Chief of Naval Operations, the Arleigh Burke was commissioned July 4,
1991, and was the most powerful surface combatant ever put to sea. Like the
larger Ticonderoga class cruisers, DDG 51's combat systems center around
the Aegis combat system and the SPY-lD, multi-function phased
array radar. The combination of Aegis, the Vertical Launching System, an
advanced anti-submarine warfare system, advanced anti-aircraft missiles and Tomahawk
ASM/LAM, the Burke class continues the revolution at sea.

The DDG 51 class incorporates all-steel construction. In 1975, the cruiser
USS Belknap (CG 26) collided with USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67).
Belknap suffered severe damage and casualties because of her aluminum
superstructure. On the basis of that event, the decision was made that all
future surface combatants would return to a steel superstructure. And, like most
modern U.S. surface combatants, DDG 51 utilizes gas turbine propulsion. These
ships replaced the older Charles F. Adams and Farragut-class
guided missile destroyers.

The Spruance-class destroyers, the first large U.S. Navy warships to
employ gas turbine engines as their main propulsion system, are undergoing
extensive modernizing. The upgrade program includes addition of vertical
launchers for advanced missiles on 24 ships of this class, in addition to an
advanced ASW system and upgrading of its helicopter capability.
Spruance-class destroyers are expected to remain a major part of the
Navy's surface combatant force into the 21st century.